The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam Quotes

“Winston Churchill on Islam: “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. “Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Alexis de Tocqueville on Islam: “I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Case study: The Zoroastrians Would it really have been so bad if the Muslims had conquered Europe? After all, the Christians would still have been able to practice their religion. They would just have had to put up with a little discrimination, right? Although “a little discrimination” is all that most Islamic apologists will acknowledge about dhimmitude, the long-term effects of the dhimma were much more damaging for non-Muslims. Even centuries after the Muslim conquest of Egypt, the Coptic Christians maintained an overwhelming majority there. Yet today the Copts amount to just 10 percent, or less, of the Egyptian population. It’s the same story with every non-Muslim group that has fallen completely under Islamic rule. The Zoroastrians, or Parsis, are followers of the Persian priest and prophet Zoroaster, or Zarathustra (628–551 B.C.). Before the advent of Islam, Zoroastrianism was for a long period the official religion of Persia (modern-day Iran), and was the dominant religion when the Persian Empire spanned from the Aegean Sea to the Indus River. Zoroastrians were commonly found from Persia to China. But after the Muslim conquest of Persia, Zoroastrians were given dhimmi status and subjected to cruel persecutions, which often included forced conversions. Many fled to India to escape Muslim rule, only to fall prey to the warriors of jihad again when the Muslims started to advance into India. The suffering of the Zoroastrians under Islam was strikingly similar to that of Christians and Jews under Islam farther to the West, and it continued well into modern times (even to this very day under the Iranian mullahocracy).”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“So what did the Crusades accomplish? They bought Europe time—time that might have meant the difference between her demise and dhimmitude and her rise and return to glory. If Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard the Lionhearted, and countless others hadn’t risked their lives to uphold the honor of Christ and His Church thousands of miles from home, the jihadists would almost certainly have swept across Europe much sooner. Not only did the Crusader armies keep them tied down at a crucial period, fighting for Antioch and Ascalon instead of Varna and Vienna, they also brought together armies that would not have existed otherwise. Pope Urban’s call united men around a cause; had that cause not existed or been publicized throughout Europe, many of these men would not have been warriors at all. They would have been ill-equipped to repel a Muslim invasion of their homeland.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“John Quincy Adams on Islam: “In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE…. Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant…While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.” (Emphasis in the original)”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Muhammad vs. Jesus “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” Jesus (Matthew 5:11) “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter.” Qur’an 2:191”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, Oxford University Press, 1955. An English translation of the earliest biography of Muhammad—written by a pious Muslim. Virtually every page presents a devastating refutation of the whitewashed, peaceful Muhammad of PC myth.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“With religious vilification laws now coming to Britain and undoubtedly elsewhere in the West, Scot’s question rings out with global implications and must be answered. If it is inciting hatred against Muslims when non-Muslims simply explore what Islam and the Qur’an actually teach, then there cannot be a reasonable public discussion of Islam. Such legal protections actually make Muslims a separate class, beyond criticism, precisely at the moment when the West needs to examine the implications of having admitted people with greater allegiance to Islamic law than to pluralism, freedom, and democracy.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Islamophobia” as a weapon of jihad The charge of “Islamophobia” is routinely used to shift attention away from jihad terrorists. After a rise in jihadist militancy and the arrest of eight people in Switzerland on suspicion of aiding suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, some Muslims in Switzerland were in no mood to clean house: “As far as we’re concerned,” said Nadia Karmous, leader of a Muslim women’s group in Switzerland, “there is no rise in Islamism, but rather an increase in Islamophobia.”5 This pattern has recurred in recent years all over the world as “Islamophobia” has passed into the larger lexicon and become a self-perpetuating industry. In Western countries, “Islamophobia” has taken a place beside “racism,” “sexism,” and “homophobia.” The absurdity of all this was well illustrated by a recent incident in Britain: While a crew was filming the harassment of a Muslim for a movie about “Islamophobia,” two passing Brits, who didn’t realize the cameras were rolling, stopped to defend the person being assaulted. Yet neither the filmmakers nor the reporters covering these events seemed to realize that this was evidence that the British were not as violent and xenophobic as the film they were creating suggested.6 Historian Victor Davis Hanson has ably explained the dangerous shift of focus that “Islamophobia” entails: There really isn’t a phenomenon like “Islamophobia”—at least no more than there was a “Germanophobia” in hating Hitler or “Russophobia” in detesting Stalinism. Any unfairness or rudeness that accrues from the “security profiling” of Middle Eastern young males is dwarfed by efforts of Islamic fascists themselves—here in the U.S., in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and Israel—to murder Westerners and blow up civilians. The real danger to thousands of innocents is not an occasional evangelical zealot or uncouth politician spouting off about Islam, but the deliberately orchestrated and very sick anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that floods the airways worldwide, emanating from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, to be sure, but also from our erstwhile “allies” in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.7”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“The whitewash of Kingdom of Heaven Kingdom of Heaven is a classic cowboys-and-Indians story in which the Muslims are noble and heroic and the Christians are venal and violent. The script is heavy on modern-day PC clichés and fantasies of Islamic tolerance; brushing aside dhimmi laws and attitudes (of which Ridley Scott has most likely never heard), it invents a peace-and-tolerance group called the “Brotherhood of Muslims, Jews and Christians.” But of course, the Christians spoiled everything. A publicist for the film explained, “They were working together. It was a strong bond until the Knights Templar caused friction between them.” Ah yes, those nasty “Christian extremists.” Kingdom of Heaven was made for those who believe that all the trouble between the Islamic world and the West has been caused by Western imperialism, racism, and colonialism, and that the glorious paradigm of Islamic tolerance, which was once a beacon to the world, could be reestablished if only the wicked white men of America and Europe would be more tolerant. Ridley Scott and his team arranged advance screenings for groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, making sure that sensitive Muslim feelings were not hurt. It is a dream movie for the PC establishment in every way except one: It isn’t true. Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, author of A Short History of the Crusades and one of the world’s leading historians of the period, called the movie “rubbish,” explaining that “it’s not historically accurate at all” as it “depicts the Muslims as sophisticated and civilised, and the Crusaders are all brutes and barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.” Oh, and “there was never a confraternity of Muslims, Jews and Christians. That is utter nonsense.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“But the worst came from the Mongol Tamerlane, a dedicated Muslim who conducted furious jihad campaigns against the Nestorians and devastated their cities and churches. It was full-blown war against the Assyrian Christians: Tamerlane offered them conversion to Islam, dhimmitude, or death. By 1400, the vast Nestorian domains were no more; Christianity had almost completely died out in Persia, Central Asia, and China.7 After this, virtually all Nestorians lived as dhimmis under Muslim rule. And like the Zoroastrians, their community dwindled down to a tiny remnant under the relentless weight of this institutionalized injustice. If the Christians in Europe had been subjected to the same fate, it is distinctly possible that the world might never have known the works of Dante Alighieri, or Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Mozart, or Bach. It is likely that there would never have been an El Greco, or a Giotto, or an Olivier Messaien. A community that must expend all its energy just to survive does not easily pursue art and music. The Crusades may have made the full flowering of European civilization possible.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“What is the effect of being made to live this way over a long period? The answer is in the numbers: After nearly 1,400 years of living as dhimmis and experiencing the true nature of Islamic tolerance, Zoroastrians today make up less than 2 percent of the population of Iran (and even less than that in India, where they fled for refuge). In Afghanistan, where Zoroastrianism also once thrived, Zoroastrians today are virtually nonexistent. This is no surprise: Conversion to Islam was often the only way these persecuted people could have any hope of living a decent life. If the Crusaders had not held off the Muslims, and Islamic jihads had ultimately finished off Christendom, would Christians in Europe have become a tiny minority, like their coreligionists in the Middle East (where Christianity was once the dominant religion) and the Zoroastrians? Would the achievements of European Christian civilization be treated no better than trash, as Islamic societies generally tend to regard the “pre-Islamic period of ignorance” in their histories?”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Of course, few conquered peoples have ever escaped this fate. The only people who have escaped Muslim dhimmitude have been those who were successful in resisting Islamic jihad: the Christians of Europe and the Hindus of India. Others were not so fortunate.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“This is not a small matter. It is from Christian Europe, after all, no matter how reluctant the PC establishment is to acknowledge it, that most philosophical and scientific exploration, as well as technological advancement, have sprung. We have already seen one key reason why science developed in the Christian world rather than the Muslim world: Christians believed in a coherent and consistent universe governed by a good God; Muslims believed in a universe governed by a God whose will was so absolute as to preclude coherence and consistency. But the implications of this all-important philosophical difference could not have worked themselves out without freedom. That freedom was not available to Christians or any other non-Muslims who had the misfortune to live under Muslim rule. In fact, any people who came under Muslim rule throughout history were ultimately reduced—no matter how extensive their numbers and grand their achievements before the Muslim conquest—to the status of a tiny and culturally derivative minority.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Guess what? Although the Crusades failed in their primary objective, they played a key role in staving off the jihad conquest of Europe. The peoples who lived in the “tolerant, pluralistic Islamic societies” of old dwindled down to tiny, harassed, despised minorities. Islamic distaste for unbelievers is a constant of Islamic history and persists today. Or would the world be different in other, quite unexpected ways? Do the words “St. Peter’s Mosque in Rome” mean anything to you?”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“But according to Islamic law, Muslims may only conclude truces during jihad warfare with non-Muslims when they are in a position of weakness and need time to gather strength to fight again. Those who concluded agreements with the Crusaders did not lose sight of this principle and never entered into a pact that ultimately weakened the Muslims’ position.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“But Paradise would not be a bore for Muslims with different proclivities. Allah also promised his blessed that in Paradise, “round about them will serve, devoted to them, young male servants handsome as pearls well-guarded” (Qur’an 52:24), “youths of perpetual freshness” (Qur’an 56:17): “if thou seest them, thou wouldst think them scattered pearls” (Qur’an 76:19). But surely the Qur’an isn’t condoning homosexuality, is it? After all, it depicts Lot telling the people of Sodom: “For ye practise your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds” (7:81) and “of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, and leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing all limits!” (26:165). A hadith commands that “if a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death.”6 Another hadith has Muhammad saying: “Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him.”7 These strictures have worked their way into Islamic legal codes, such that two Saudis were so anxious to avoid a flogging or prison term that they murdered a Pakistani who witnessed their “shameful acts” by running over him with a car, smashing his head in with a rock, and setting him on fire.8 But the pearl-like youths of Paradise have given rise to a strange double-mindedness about homosexuality in Islam. The great poet Abu Nuwas openly glorified homosexuality in his notorious poem the Perfumed Garden:”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Consequently, it is almost impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. Men can commit rape with impunity: As long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they will get off scot-free, because the victim’s testimony is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery. That accounts for the grim fact that as many as 75 percent of the imprisoned women in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.34”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Child marriage The Qur’an takes child marriage for granted in its directives about divorce. Discussing the waiting period required in order to determine if the woman is pregnant, it says: “If you are in doubt concerning those of your wives who have ceased menstruating, know that their waiting period shall be three months. The same shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (Qur’an 65:4, emphasis added). In other words, Allah is here envisioning a scenario in which a prepubescent woman is not only married, but is being divorced by her husband. One reason why such a verse might have been “revealed” to Muhammad is that he himself had a child bride: The Prophet “married ‘Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consummated that marriage when she was nine years old.”10 Child marriages were common in seventh-century Arabia—and here again the Qur’an has taken a practice that should have been abandoned long ago and given it the sanction of divine revelation.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“a surprisingly large number of those who identify themselves as Muslims have scant acquaintance with what it actually says. Although the media establishment continues to interchange the words “Muslim” and “Arab,” most Muslims worldwide today are not Arabs. Even modern Arabic, much less classical Qur’anic Arabic, is foreign to them. They often memorize the Qur’an by rote without any clear idea of what it actually says. A Pakistani Muslim once proudly told me that he had memorized large sections of the Qur’an, and planned to buy a translation one day so that he could find out exactly what it was saying. Such instances are common to a degree that may surprise most non-Muslims.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“a Greek monk and theologian (today revered as a saint by the Orthodox Church) who was imprisoned for a time by the Turks, remarked trenchantly about Muslims: “These infamous people, hated by God and infamous, boast of having got the better of the Romans [i.e., Byzantines] by their love of God…They live by the bow, the sword, and debauchery, finding pleasure in taking slaves, devoting themselves to murder, pillage, spoil…and not only do they commit these crimes, but even—what an aberration—they believe that God approves of them.”18”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“The choices for unbelievers are: Accept Islam. Pay the jizya, the poll-tax on non-Muslims, which (as we shall see) is the cornerstone of an entire system of humiliating regulations that institutionalize inferior status for non-Muslims in Islamic law. War with Muslims. Always remember, “peaceful coexistence as equals in a pluralistic society” isn’t one of the choices.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“All this means that warfare against unbelievers until they either become Muslim or pay the jizya—the special tax on non-Muslims in Islamic law—“with willing submission” (Qur’an 9:29) is the Qur’an’s last word on jihad. Mainstream Islamic tradition has interpreted this as Allah’s enduring marching orders to the human race: The Islamic umma (community) must exist in a state of perpetual war with the non-Muslim world, punctuated only by temporary truces.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“The Qur’an’s tolerant verses: “canceled” What’s more, the Qur’an’s last word on jihad is not defensive, but offensive. The suras of the Qur’an are not arranged chronologically, but according to length. However, Islamic theology divides the Qur’an into “Meccan” and “Medinan” suras. The Meccan ones come from the first segment of Muhammad’s career as a prophet, when he simply called the Meccans to Islam. Later, after he had fled to Medina, his positions hardened. The Medinan suras are less poetic and generally much longer than those from Mecca; they’re also filled with matters of law and ritual—and exhortations to jihad warfare against unbelievers. The relatively tolerant verses quoted above and others like them generally date from the Meccan period, while those with a more violent and intolerant edge are mostly from Medina. Why does this distinction matter? Because of the Islamic doctrine of abrogation (naskh). This is the idea that Allah can change or cancel what he tells Muslims: “None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?” (Qur’an 2:106). According to this idea, the violent verses of the ninth sura, including the Verse of the Sword (9:5), abrogate the peaceful verses, because they were revealed later in Muhammad’s prophetic career: In fact, most Muslim authorities agree that the ninth sura was the very last section of the Qur’an to be revealed.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Another pattern was set at Uhud that played out across the centuries: Muslims would see any aggression as a pretext for revenge, regardless of whether they provoked it. With a canny understanding of how to sway public opinion, jihadists and their PC allies on the American Left today use current events as pretexts to justify what they are doing: Time and again they portray themselves as merely reacting to grievous provocations from the enemies of Islam. By this they gain recruits and sway popular opinion. Conventional wisdom among a surprisingly broad political spectrum today holds that the global jihad movement is a response to some provocation or other: the invasion of Iraq, the establishment of Israel, the toppling of Iran’s Mossadegh—or a more generalized offense such as “American neo-colonialism” or “the lust for oil.” Those who are particularly forgetful of history blame it on newly minted epiphenomena such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, which cast a shadow over America’s presence in Iraq in 2004. But the jihadists were fighting long before Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Israel, or American independence. Indeed, they have been fighting and imitating their warrior Prophet ever since the seventh century, casting their actions as responses to the enormities of their enemies ever since Muhammad discovered his uncle’s mutilated body.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Muhammad vs. Jesus “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Jesus (Matthew 5:44) “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” Qur’an 8:60”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“From being a tiny, despised community, the Muslims were now a force with which the pagans of Arabia had to reckon—and they began to strike terror in the hearts of their enemies. Muhammad’s claim to be the last prophet of the One, True God appeared validated by a victory against enormous odds. With this victory, certain attitudes and assumptions were being planted in the minds of Muslims, which remain with many of them to this day. These include: Allah will grant victory to his people against foes that are superior in numbers or firepower, so long as they remain faithful to his commands. Victories entitle the Muslims to appropriate the possessions of the vanquished as booty. Bloody vengeance against one’s enemies belongs not solely to the Lord, but also to those who submit to him on earth. That is the meaning of the word Islam: submission. Prisoners taken in battle against the Muslims may be put to death at the discretion of Muslim leaders. Those who reject Islam are “the vilest of creatures” (Qur’an 98:6) and thus deserve no mercy. Anyone who insults or even opposes Muhammad or his people deserves a humiliating death—by beheading if possible. (This is in accordance with Allah’s command to “smite the necks” of the “unbelievers” (Qur’an 47:4)). Above all, the battle of Badr was the first practical example of what came to be known as the Islamic doctrine of jihad—a doctrine that holds the key to the understanding of both the Crusades and the conflicts of today.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Good became identified with anything that redounded to the benefit of Muslims, regardless of whether it violated moral or other laws. The moral absolutes enshrined in the Ten Commandments, and other teachings of the great religions that preceded Islam, were swept aside in favor of an overarching principle of expediency.”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Jesus (Matthew 5:44) “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” Qur’an 8:60”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

“Allah warns the Muslims not to consider booty won at Badr to belong to anyone but Muhammad:”
― Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam